


A Fair Trade

by miss_aphelion



Series: Trading Places Verse [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avenger Bucky Barnes, M/M, Magic, Parallel Universes, Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Steve Rogers, Soulmates, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 08:58:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11574747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_aphelion/pseuds/miss_aphelion
Summary: “Do you believe in fate, Captain?” Amora asks, her voice low and careful. “I can see the strings of it on you, pulling you this way and that. You are only half of a soul. Did you know that?”“Yes,” Steve says simply, because he knows exactly who she’s talking about. “I lost the other half.”(Or; Steve makes a deal with a sorceress to save Bucky, but there may be no saving himself)





	A Fair Trade

**Author's Note:**

> So I got this idea of Steve making a deal to trade places with Bucky, and set out to write a prompt for it so someone would hopefully write it for me. Three sleepless nights later, and I ended up with this crazy story instead. 
> 
> Timeline: It’s complicated. But it starts a couple months after Winter Soldier.

He doesn’t mean for it to happen. 

He goes there meaning to stop her.

* * * * *

Thor is afraid of her in a way they have never seen him afraid of anything. 

“You cannot trust her,” he tells them solemnly. “You cannot allow her to speak to you.” 

“Got it, don’t listen,” Tony says. “Listening’s not really my strong suit, anyway, so I should probably be fine. We can get Cap some earplugs.” 

“This is not a jesting matter,” Thor says, frowning slightly. “Her power is vast. She has been known to change the very threads of fate.” 

“Haven’t we all?” Tony asks glibly. 

Steve ignores Tony, determination building up beneath his skin at having this new cause. He’s been adrift for so long now, trying to find Bucky, and trying to destroy those that hurt Bucky and—and this is a nice diversion. He takes Thor’s apprehension for what it is: the precursor to what must be a deadly threat. This is a battle that he can fight, and he only ever feels normal these days with adrenaline coursing through his veins. 

“Who is she?” he asks. 

“She is called Amora,” Thor says, and will not meet their eyes. “She is the one that taught Loki everything that he knows.”

* * * * *

He’s the one that finds her.

She has large green eyes, with pupils like a cat. Her hair is blonde and curled, slanting around her round face like a starlet’s from the twenties. She is wearing a beautiful red dress, low cut and skin tight, slit more than halfway up her thigh. 

Steve doesn’t know why he had been expecting her to be old. He had forgotten that Thor was born almost a millennium before even him. 

It catches him off guard, or maybe it’s her eyes, but he freezes and his shield clatters to the ground.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Captain,” she tells him sweetly. 

He feels so tired all the sudden, as though all the years he didn’t have the chance to live are catching up to him and trying to drag him down. She laughs brightly, and steps closer, unconcerned by his distress. She presses a hand to his cheek, and suddenly he can move again—but he no longer _wants to_. 

“Do you believe in fate, Captain?” Amora asks, her voice low and careful. “I can see the strings of it on you, pulling you this way and that. You are only half of a soul. Did you know that?” 

“Yes,” Steve says simply, because he knows exactly who she’s talking about. “I lost the other half.” 

“Hmm, lost, yes,” she hums. “I’m afraid there’s precious little left of it for you to find.” 

“Do you know where he is?” Steve asks, his breath catching in his throat. 

“I do,” she says. “I could give that location to you.” 

“Let me guess, I just have to let you go?” Steve asks. 

“I’d certainly be getting the better end of the bargain if you did," she says. “I believe in making fair deals, so I will make you another offer. I will offer you a different kind of trade.” 

She reaches up and drags his cowl down, staring up into his eyes. Her irises flitter behind those strange vertical pupils like miniature galaxies, and she smiles with a mockery of kindness that doesn’t fool him for a moment. 

“You loved your friend,” she says. “But he suffered—so much he suffered.” She tsks with mock regret, her fingernails digging slightly in at his temples. He should pull away. He should— 

“Tell me, Captain, did you love him enough to take his place?” she questions softly, and he forgets everything else. 

Because he’s wanted to trade places with Bucky since he fell. He wanted to trade places with Bucky when he woke up to this world when he wasn’t supposed to and Bucky was still dead. He wanted to trade places with Bucky when Bucky wasn’t dead after all and couldn’t remember his own name. 

There has never been a moment in Steve Roger’s life that he was not willing to trade places with Bucky Barnes in order to spare him pain. 

“Yes,” he says. 

“That is an oath,” Amora tells him, pulling her hands abruptly away from his head, watching him like she sees every thought in his mind. “You have just made an oath to me.”

* * * * *

It flashes behind his eyes like a movie reel:

_He doesn’t toss Bucky the gun, he fires himself and keeps Bucky behind him._

_Bucky doesn’t pick up the shield, because Steve doesn’t let it go._

_The train still gets blasted apart, but this time it’s Steve that falls and falls and falls._

Bucky is still the one that screams.

* * * * *

He wakes up to Zola and a metal arm. The fingers move like his own, but it’s horrifying to see, to feel, to know what has been done without his consent. Bucky woke to this, the first time around. Buck would have woken to this and wouldn’t have understood, wouldn’t have known—

He wakes again and they taunt him with Bucky’s death. They show him newspaper articles with the Valkyrie like they expect him to scream and cry and break. 

All he can feel is rage—not because of Bucky’s death, because Bucky isn’t dead. 

But because of the realization that this is what they had done to Bucky. They had taunted him with his death, they had tried to break him, they had tortured him. Steve doesn’t break, because this is what he wants. Seeing those headlines: _Bucky Barnes takes down the Valkyrie!_ , _Bucky Barnes carries on the legacy of Captain America, Saves New York!_ , _Bucky Barnes gives his life—_

It’s right in ways that it was never right before. It’s right that it is Bucky, and not him, featured on those headlines. Growing up, no one had thought anything of Steve but Bucky. 

Then during the war, no one had noticed Bucky behind Captain America. It had always felt so backwards, to him. 

“Don’t know what you’re gloating for,” Steve tells them, as they strap him to a chair. “Pretty sure that means you lost.” 

They don’t know what to make of his laughter. He suspects they think they’ve broken him already—but it’s just that he was sort of broken, at the start.

* * * * *

The chair is pain like he has never known. He thinks of the centuries of pain spread out behind Bucky, and the centuries of pain that lie ahead of him.

For the first time, he wishes for oblivion. 

But it doesn’t come. 

His mind is clear. He is still himself. He can recall the color of his mother’s eyes, and Bucky’s laugh, and the way Natasha grins right before a mission. He can recall his every battle in the war, every mission with the Avengers, every moment of his childhood with Bucky. 

They want to send him on his first mission, but he is still Captain America. He is not the Winter Solider. 

_You must hold your end of the bargain, or I will send him back to do it for you, then take him from you for good. You must play the part. You must be the Winter Solider in every way._ He remembers Amora’s grin, her barely restrained glee, as she explains how it will work. _No matter what, you must complete your missions. Do you understand?_

He hadn’t understood at all. He thought he was signing up to be like Bucky, that he _wouldn’t have a choice_ —but it doesn’t matter what they do to him, his mind remains his own. 

“Do you understand your mission?” they demand. 

“I do,” Steve answers flatly. 

The first target dies before he can scream. The bullet goes through the temple one side to the other, perfectly placed like how Bucky used to do it in the war. 

Steve’s never really liked guns: but that doesn’t mean he isn’t any good with one.

* * * * *

The decades pass like fever dreams. He wakes, he kills, he sleeps.

There is a week every decade or so, three days every few years, an entire month once in the seventies. He does what he is told, and time passes quickly. 

He suspects they do not try to wipe his mind as often as they had Bucky’s. He rarely gives them any reason to do it at all. It doesn’t work, when they do it anyway. 

It isn’t really seventy years, he tells himself. For most of it he’s asleep.

* * * * *

It already happened. It all _already happened_.

And if he doesn’t do it, Bucky will have to. That’s what he tells himself. Sometimes, it even works. Most of the time, it doesn’t help much at all. 

The Starks are the worst. 

But Bucky is safe. Bucky is whole and slumbering. Howard Stark’s last words are not: _Sergeant Barnes_. 

And he hasn’t been a Captain for such a very long time—the lack of recognition is far too easy to fake.

* * * * *

He panics at first when he sees nothing on the newsstands. It is a week after they found him in the ice the first time, and he is in Oslo to kill a scientist named Dr. Ola Poulsen. He’s already figured out how he’s going to do it, but told his handlers that he needs another day of surveillance. 

He expects to see something about the return of Bucky Barnes, but he had forgotten they had never announced him, either. Not until the Battle of New York, when it was too little too late for a cover up and he was on the front page of every newspaper in the world. 

The invasion is still days away, but if all went to plan then Bucky is already in New York, awake and alive and safe.  
Something catches in his heart and he wants to kill the handlers and take the jet and just run so he can _find him_. 

But he knows he’s not done yet. 

So he shoots Poulsen through the head from seven hundred yards away, and he does it so well that neither of them feel a thing.

* * * * *

The next time they wake him he heads to another newsstand the first chance he gets to slip his handlers. Bucky is all over the magazines and the papers, along with the rest of the Avengers. The gossip columns all state that Bucky and Tony are the best of friends, and less conclusively, that Bucky and the Black Widow have relationships off and on. 

There is a picture of Bucky and Tony together at some benefit, their arms around each other, both of them dressed for a black tie event, though Tony’s tie is purple. It’s not something Steve ever did. It’s strange to think that while he retraces Bucky’s steps, Bucky is walking an entirely new path without him. He feels something like jealously curl inside him as he stares at the picture, and by the time he comes back to himself he realizes that he’s ripped the page in half. 

He pays for the damaged magazine and then slips away again, wondering about what he’s seen. Bucky hadn’t taken up the mantle of Captain America, he does not wear the costume or carry the shield. Part of Steve had wondered if he would, but Bucky had never really cared much for Captain America. 

He'd been the only one to care about Steve Rogers, instead.

In all the pictures Bucky’s wearing black, with a rifle strapped to his back. He’s the only Avenger without a code name. 

They all just call him Bucky Barnes.

* * * * *

It’s 2014 and he’s in Washington D.C.

Jasper Sitwell just went flying across the divider into a semi, and Natasha Romanoff is driving the car. 

Bucky is in the passenger seat. Steve gets a glimpse of him through his goggles, for just a moment. His eyes are wide and he’s wearing a Black Sabbath t-shirt that he suspects was a gift from Tony, with a blue hooded sweatshirt that has too long sleeves. 

It’s not what he’s expecting, and it’s not quite the same as before. Sam doesn’t seem to be here at all. 

But then, Bucky had never really been the type for early morning runs.

He takes the steering wheel, and he chases them down the street because this is what he needs to do. He is corralling events into place, arranging the configuration to the mirror image he’s striving to create. He shoots Natasha in the shoulder, because that’s what Bucky did. 

But fighting Bucky is like fighting himself, and he feels sick and nauseous and off his game. He can do anything, _anything but this_. Bucky almost has him at one point, and the game is nearly up. He catches himself midair at the last moment, spinning to regain his balance so he lands crouched on his feet.

And then he sees the mask on the ground between them, because _of course._

Bucky’s eyes widen and his mouth opens, but closes again. His sweatshirt is half off his shoulder, and it’s not appropriate clothing for fighting at all. He places a hand to his heart like he’s trying to reassure himself it’s still there, and he just keeps staring, like he doesn’t believe what he sees. 

“Steve?” he asks softly. He doesn’t sound as certain as Steve had been, when it was him. 

Steve wonders how different he must look. His hair has grown past his chin, nearly to his shoulders, and his metal arm still feels like a weapon he can’t put down. He jerks up his pistol anyway, aiming at Bucky as though he could ever really hurt him without hurting himself so much worse. 

"Who the hell is Steve?" he asks, and though his hand is shaking he does not lower the gun, because this is the part he's agreed to play.

Bucky just watches him, increasingly devastated, as Natasha reaches for the rocket launcher and Steve turns and _runs_.

* * * * *

He steps out onto the hellicarrier and he’s so close now. He’s so tired and he remembers this scene from the other direction, which is dizzying, but somehow he stays on his feet. 

Bucky approaches from the other side. He’s seen him in the magazines, and on the street, but he hasn’t seen him like this, not geared up and ready for a fight. His hair is a little shorter than he’d kept it before, and there are lighter highlights he doesn’t quite remember. They’d spent so much of the war without any sun at all. 

He’s wearing black again, a compliment to Natasha’s usual uniform, with a rifle strap over his shoulder and a holster on his thigh. It seems like a more honest way to dress than Steve had ever managed in his place. He carried that shield as though it was a passive weapon, as though it had not killed as many people as Bucky’s gun. 

But Bucky doesn’t look at all like a relic from the war, not like him.

He looks like he belongs here in this time, so much more than Steve ever really had. 

"I know you don’t remember me, but I’m not..." Bucky begins, looking uncertain even as he steps closer. "I can't fight you."

Steve says nothing. Bucky never completed this mission, so he doesn't have to complete it, either. He wonders how much he needs to do before it can just be over. He wants so much for it to finally be over. 

Bucky watches him sadly, pulling in a shaky breath. "But I do have to stop you.” 

Bucky moves with just as much deadly grace as he’d had as the Winter Soldier, pulling his gun from his holster and aiming it in one quick move. Even though Steve is already moving to dodge, all three consecutive shots still hit their target, because Bucky has already accounted for his every move. Bucky was always a gifted marksman—even with all of Steve’s hard-won experience, he wonders if Bucky might still be the better shot. 

Steve can feel the impact at his throat, he can feel himself go cold. _Is this the end of the line?_ he wonders. _After everything, is this—_

He wonders if it was all worth it, but then there’s Bucky, catching him in his arms, his beautiful blue-grey eyes staring down at him, and _of course it was worth it_. 

"Sorry, buddy," Bucky whispers, as he gently lowers him down. "It's for your own good."

Steve frowns at him, unsure why he's still alive. He should have bled out within moments. He weakly reaches up, feeling at his neck, and tugs one small dart of three from his skin. He stares down at it and it takes a moment for it to sink in. 

Not bullets, then. Tranquilizers.

The last thought he has before it all goes dark is: 

_Why the hell didn’t I think of that?_

* * * * *

He wakes to a grey stone ceiling and fluorescent lights. He can feel the metal wrapped around his wrists, but his head is on a pillow that’s softer than anything he can remember. He glances to his side, and then he sees Bucky. 

He’s sitting on the floor against the wall, one leg pulled up to his chest and the other splayed along the floor. He’s wearing loose fitting blue cargo pants and a black t-shirt, with combat boots on that remind him of his own. He’s also unarmed, which is reckless. 

“Are you supposed to be in here?” Steve asks, because he knows this is not Bucky’s doing alone. He doesn’t think even Bucky has been running free in this world long enough to have his own bunker and titanium reinforced restraints. 

“No,” Bucky says, and leaves it at that. Like of course he’s not and of course he still is, all at once. Knowing what he knows of them both, it makes perfect sense to Steve, but he is not supposed to remember. 

He frowns as he recognizes the tiny SHIELD logo on the pocket of Bucky’s t-shirt. “Was SHIELD destroyed?” he asks. 

Bucky watches him carefully, and stands, but doesn’t come closer. “No,” he says after a moment. “We hacked the Hydra files buried in the SHIELD databanks to get a list of the Hydra moles, then had them all arrested.” He pauses for a moment. “So you’re safe, now. You’re not going back to them.” 

“Bucky,” Steve starts, worried that SHIELD still exists, but he trails off when he notices the edge of caution in Bucky’s eyes that hadn’t been there a moment before. He’d forgotten, for a moment. He’d forgotten he wasn’t supposed to remember. 

"You remember me?" Bucky asks, his voice casual, even as he's coiled like a spring.

"There's been times I've forgotten myself," Steve tells him, and this is true. "But I don't think I could ever forget you."

The suspicion disappears from Bucky’s eyes far too easily, and he rushes forward, reaching out to gently grip his right hand. Bucky’s eyes are running across the restraints holding him down when a wry, familiar voices comes through the intercom: “Don’t even think about it, Barnes.” 

But Bucky is thinking about it, Steve can tell.

“Don’t make me come in there.” And of course it’s Natasha—he should have guessed. He bets Fury is somewhere around, too. He’d made sure his shots were just short of fatal, after all. They’d all had their parts to play, but Bucky’s gone entirely off script. 

Tony used to say to him all the time, _work smarter, not harder_. It had always reminded him of Bucky, who would slice through Steve’s overly-complicated strategies to point out some basic, simple shortcut that all the rest of them had missed. 

Bucky had taken him out with tranquilizers before they’d even had a chance to fight, and then cut Hydra out of SHIELD without destabilizing the entire organization. Steve has suspected for awhile now that he’d made a better Winter Solider than Bucky ever had. 

It seems that Bucky is far more suited to the role of hero, instead. 

But that isn’t exactly a revelation—it’s why Steve made this trade in the first place. 

“Bucky,” Steve says, and this time his voice cracks. He can’t remember the last time he had an actual conversation. He cannot remember the last time someone touched him with kindness. “I’ve—I’ve missed you, so much.” 

Bucky does not undo the restraints, but he does crawl onto the bed with him. He lays against the rail and Steve’s right side, and rests his forehead against his shoulder. “I should have gone back for you,” he says, and Steve can tell he’s crying, though no sound gives him away. “I should have found you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m—“ 

Steve knows exactly how he feels. He has been in this exact position, and he does not envy Bucky it. Steve went through seventy years of suffering and torture and violence just so he wouldn't have to tell Bucky he was sorry for not finding him. 

Steve knows that he’s always been the selfish one. That’s the real reason he made this trade.

* * * * *

Bucky finally gets permission to undo the restraints when they bring him food. Steve suspects they only let him do it because they know they won’t be able to stop him. Bucky has that same stubborn look in his eye he always got when Steve was half the size and sick more often not, and Bucky would tell him he wasn’t allowed to die every single time.

“Do you remember who you are?” Bucky asks him softly, as he pulls contraband chocolate bars and strawberries from the pockets of his cargo pants, and adds them to Steve’s tray. 

“Yes. Steve Rogers,” Steve says. He’s not quite sure how to play this. He had planned to slip away after the hellicarrier, then approach Bucky somewhere when he was alone. He had not accounted for the possibility that he would be knocked unconscious by tranquilizer darts, or that SHIELD would remain standing. So he doesn’t know what to do now that they’re conversing with a camera aimed at them from the corner of the room. He doesn’t know how to slowly pretend to come back to himself, so he crafts a story from bits of truth. “I always remembered, the longer I was away from them. They would put me in this chair—“ he breaks off, glancing away, but not before he can see his own rage reflected back at him from Bucky’s eyes. “And I would forget again.” 

“Then you’re getting all your memories back?” Bucky asks hopefully, before glancing resentfully at the camera. “You shouldn’t be here.” 

“Yes, I should,” Steve says calmly, and this part is performance. He’s learned to lie, and lie well. He remembers Natasha’s whispered lessons and he remembers waking up and waking up and pretending all the time. “I never wanted to do any of those things, but it was still me that did them.” 

“I don’t care what you’ve done,” Bucky says fiercely. 

Bucky knows him too well not to see how he’s changed, what’s become of him. He’s dangerous in entirely new ways. But Bucky has the same look in his eyes that Steve had so many years ago, when he’d answered yes to a question he never could have answered any other way. 

But then Steve hadn’t cared what Bucky had done, either. He hadn’t cared how much he’d changed. If Amora hadn’t offered him this chance, he would have found another way to save Bucky. He would have pieced him back together himself. 

“You should,” Steve tells him. 

Bucky looks down at his feet. “Far as I’m concerned, you got caught cause of me,” he says. “Anything you’ve done, that’s on me.” 

“I’m pretty sure I was the leader,” Steve reminds him. “That, I can remember.” 

Bucky snorts. “Yeah, sure, I was following you,” he says. “Always was. But I was supposed to have your back. I was supposed to be the one that died for you.” 

The thought sends cold creeping up Steve’s spine, like that feeling when they first start putting him to sleep. “Don’t say that,” he says tightly. “Don’t you ever say that.” 

“It’s the truth,” Bucky says quietly. 

“If it was up to me, if I got to choose, I’d have chosen me to fall,” Steve tells him, “every single time.” 

“That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have still been me—I can’t explain it, I just know it should have been me,” Bucky tells him brokenly. “I’m not worth you, Steve. Never was.” 

“You are,” Steve says. “And whatever happened to me, it brought me back to you. You’re worth every moment of it. I wouldn’t change anything.” 

He wouldn’t. He _didn’t._

He’d do it all again.

* * * * *

Bucky keeps bringing him little gifts. He tapes a ridiculous motivational poster to the wall with a tiny kitten hanging from the limb of a tree and the caption _Hang in There_ , smirking over at him the entire time he does it. He brings him stacks of sketch books with sticks of charcoal that he can’t quite bring himself to use. He brings him photos of their time in the war that are so old they’re more brown and yellow than black and white. He sneaks in an electric shaver and a pair of scissors when Steve complains about his hair, and flips off the camera before sitting Steve down right in front of it to cut it for him. 

It’s disorienting to see Bucky like this, more like before the war than during it, with a quick grin and a wicked sense of humor and the light all back in his eyes. Steve has had moments where he thought it might end up being for nothing, that they might end up both losing themselves, but for once—

For once he finally saved Bucky, instead of the other way around.

Later, his face shaved and his hair finally out of his eyes, he lays on the small cot in the corner with Bucky tucked into his side. He’s pulled Steve’s metal arm up around him, and is pressing his fingertips against its metal tips. “Can you feel this?” he asks softly. 

“I can feel it,” Steve says. 

It is the first time the arm feels like a part of him, instead of just a weapon. He gently weaves the metal fingers between each of Bucky’s, marveling at how Bucky’s hand looks almost small in its grasp. He knows Bucky’s never exactly been small, but most of his treasured memories are still of Bucky towering over him, so the dissonance is there. 

“I hate that they’re the ones that gave it to you, that they had to, but it’s pretty amazing,” he says cautiously, like he’s afraid to offend him. “Tony would love to look at it. I bet he could build you an even better one.” 

_Tony_. 

Steve has been trying not to think of him. He knows it’s not going to end well. He turns his head until his lips are brushing against the top of Bucky’s head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says. “I killed his parents.” 

Bucky goes still in his arms, and then slips his hold, sitting up and turning back to look at him. “God, Steve,” he whispers, horrified—but not _at him_ , Steve realizes with a relieved exhale, _for him_. “I’m so sorry you had to do that. I know you and Howard—“ 

He breaks off and looks away, reaching out blindly to entwine his hand with Steve’s metal fingers once again. They haven’t discussed this new level of intimacy, this touch-starved obsession they both seem to have. Bucky just seems to know that all Steve wants to do is hold him, and he’s always done what Steve wants. 

“It’s not your fault,” Bucky says after a moment. “It’s not. He’d understand that.” 

Steve is pretty certain that he won’t.

* * * * *

Bucky has been spending every moment that they let him by Steve’s side, so when one morning two guards almost as tall as him show up wielding two shock-batons that won’t actually stop him, he knows that Bucky has been intentionally delayed somewhere, most likely by Natasha. 

But in this world it’s Bucky that’s the national hero, so he doesn’t think he’ll be in any actual danger. 

Where they might be taking him is another matter entirely. 

He decides to go along with it for now, unwilling to play his hand too soon. He says nothing as the guards fasten both his wrists to the center of a table with restraints heavy enough he knows he won’t be able to get out of them quickly enough to do him any good. 

It makes him edgy, and it doesn’t help his stress levels any when Nick Fury drops into the seat across from him. 

It’s weird to know the man in front of him, to know him at his worst, and see none of that recognition in return. This Bucky actually remembers Steve Rogers better than the one in the world he’d left behind, but everyone else—all of their shared history is just washed away, left only in his mind. 

If he didn’t have more pressing concerns, he’d be a little worried about how easily he traded them all away just to have Bucky back. It should really hurt him more than it does. 

“Barnes wants you released, so he can take you somewhere to recover,” Fury tells him, his hostile tone a little incongruous when paired against his words. “That what you want?” 

One of the first things Steve learned during his stint as the Winter Soldier was how to hide his wants. He grins slightly, meeting Fury’s eye. “Would you let me go if it was?” he asks. 

“That’s not what I asked,” Fury says simply, and crosses his arms. “Barnes seems to think you’re a victim in all this.” 

“And what do you think?” Steve asks wryly. 

“I don't think you much act like a man that's been unmade,” he says thoughtfully. “But I don’t think Captain America would willingly work for Hydra, either. So you can see my problem.” 

For years Steve had told himself none of it would change him. It was his choice to suffer in Bucky’s place and these things were fated anyway, and he _wouldn't change._

And of course that determination just changed him even more.

“I hated everything they made me do, every moment,” Steve tells him honestly, refusing to look away. “If there had been a way for me to escape from them before now, I would have done it—but from the moment I was their prisoner, there was no way I could leave.” 

There is a loud bang outside the doors, but Fury doesn’t twitch. He pulls his sleeve back to reveal a small touch screen watch, and types in a quick command. “Looks like Barnes isn’t real happy about our little meeting.” 

Steve feels himself pale, glancing back at the restraints, judging his chances of getting himself and Bucky out of here clean. “If you so much as touch him—“ he warns. 

“He’s fine,” Fury says dismissively. “He’s being escorted to wait for you in your room until he calms down from his little temper tantrum.” Steve’s eyes narrow further, and Fury rolls his. “Agent Romanoff is taking him. He’s going willingly. I promise.” 

“Why do I think that doesn’t mean all that much, coming from you?” Steve asks. 

“Look, I didn't get here by being stupid, and you're the last man I want for an enemy. Ive got the scars to remind me if I ever happen to forget,” Fury snaps, leaning forward. "I'm here to make an offer, not issue a threat."

“An offer,” Steve echoes. “You want me to work for SHIELD?” He snorts, leaning back as far as the restraints will let him. “How are you any better than Hydra?” 

“We got rid of the Hydra operatives,” Fury starts. 

“You really think you got them all?” Steve asks. “You should have burned the whole thing to the ground.” 

“Then we’d all be standing on scorched earth,” Fury responds calmly. “Instead, we’re rebuilding. We’re stabilizing. You could be a part of that. Barnes already is, you know. And I’m getting the feeling the two of you are sort of a package deal.” 

Fury has absolutely no idea at all. Steve watches him warily, reviewing his options. Bucky will leave with him, if— _when_ —he asks. He knows this to his bones. There is part of him that wants nothing more than to get them both as far from here as he can. 

But he still has unfinished business, and access to SHIELDs resources could make it all a lot easier to close out. 

“If I work for you, you don’t send Bucky anywhere without my approval,” Steve says simply. “He doesn’t go on any missions without me.” 

“You might be missing the point,” Fury says dryly. “There’s a slight possibility that the missions where you skill set comes in handy, Barnes wouldn’t actually approve.”

“Then he doesn’t find out about them,” Steve says. “He’s kept safe on site here until I get back.” 

“Barnes is one of my best assets,” Fury says. “I’d hate to bench him.” 

Steve inwardly bristles at the title of asset, but doesn’t let it show. “He may be good, but you came here because you need me,” Steve says. “You want someone that _isn’t_ good. My terms are non-negotiable. I’ll work for you, but I need to know that Bucky’s safe.” 

“And if I refuse?” he asks. 

“You'll lose us both,” Steve says. 

“I could just kill you, keep him,” Fury says, giving a shrug. “Win win.”

Steve smiles at him, and the thing is, his smile hasn’t changed. It’s the same smile he’d given on all those USO tours, the same one he’d given before flashing off a salute. It’s the eyes that make the difference. 

“I’d burn this entire world for Bucky. I’ve already done it, once before,” Steve tells him, his voice pleasant and calm. “Are you really willing to take the chance he’d do any less for me?” 

Fury isn’t. He’s far too good at playing the odds.

* * * * *

Bucky has an apartment in Manhattan, and they ride the elevator all the way to the top. After weeks held in SHIELDs underground bunker, he’s relieved to be free, and fighting the urge to just grab Bucky and run somewhere no one could find them ever again. 

Steve never used to run from a fight. It may be a sign of how much he’s changed. 

Bucky’s home isn’t overly large, but the view is breathtaking. The view to the edge of the ocean is only obscured by Stark Tower, rising up above the other buildings like a ghastly manufactured fist. He tears his eyes from the large floor to ceiling windows, and realizes as he looks around that this truly is a _home_. 

Across from a plush sofa with a large matching rectangular ottoman, a large flat screen TV is mounted flush against one of the deep blue walls. There’s a simulated fireplace beneath it, built with real brick even if the fire is fake, and photos run across the mantle from one side to the other. 

He steps towards them like he’s being pulled, noting that on the left side the first picture is him and Bucky. They’re in black and white and laughing together, half-dressed in their uniforms. Beside it there is a picture of them seated next to the Howling Commandos, and one of Steve and his mother, from years before she died. These are the only reminders of the past, because the rest of the photos are glossy and bright and new. 

There is one with Clint wearing a garish pink birthday hat with the words _Over the Hill_ written all across it in black cursive, Natasha and Bucky leaning forward to kiss him on either cheek as Clint scrunches his face up distaste. 

There’s one of Thor, Bruce, Clint, Natasha, Tony and Bucky all sitting at a dinner table, raising up their wine glasses. Bucky is leaning back against Tony, his head on his shoulder, with his legs splayed over into the next chair atop Natasha’s lap. 

There’s a selfie of Natasha and Bucky, with Natasha sticking her tongue out and cross-eyed, and Bucky laughing at her too helplessly to make any faces of his own. 

There is one of Bucky and Tony in one of Tony’s many labs, leaning over a table with bits and gears spread all across it. Bucky’s got safety goggles pushed back up on his forehead, and he’s giving Tony the sort of awestruck smile Steve had thought was meant only for him—but now that he thinks about it, he’s pretty sure he’d given it to Howard Stark, too, that night they went to see the flying car. 

The frame of this photo isn’t as simple as the rest. It’s red metal, with a scorch mark on one side like it came from a piece of Tony’s suit. There is an inscription engraved along the edges in delicate, beautiful cursive that he recognizes from Tony’s signature: _To my 2nd favorite lab assistant. Cause let’s face it, you’re no Dum-E._

The pun is ridiculous and sort of adorable, and not something he expects from Tony at all. 

The last photo is of Bucky in a baseball uniform, wearing his cap backwards, smiling brightly and surrounded by adoring children in little league suits. There is block text along the bottom of the photo: _The Little Avengers, 2013._

It should make him happy to see Bucky so happy, but really it’s just disorienting. These were his friends, but he’s starting to suspect he hadn’t been doing it right. They had never really gone out to dinners, or had birthday parties, and he’d definitely never worked together with Tony in his lab or looked at him quite like that.

“When I first woke up, I just wanted to go back to sleep,” Bucky says softly, as he comes to stand beside him. “You were dead and I—I didn’t know what to do with myself, without you to follow. I didn’t want to live in a world that had taken you, but then Nat told me—she told me that I owed it to you to live.” 

Nat had once said the same thing to him.

He hadn't listened. 

Bucky reaches back and scratches behind his ear, looking worried. “So that’s what I tried to do.” 

Steve has always just wanted Bucky to be happy. He could never be resentful of that. 

It’s just that it had never actually occurred to him that Bucky might be better off without him. 

Steve had barely been functioning in this bizarre world. He’d had Nat, and then Sam, but that was the pretty much the entirety of it. He only saw Nat at work, and he barely even got the chance to really know Sam. But Bucky had built an actual life for himself. He’d taken the Avengers and he’d made them a family. 

“Steve,” Bucky says quietly. “Please say something.” 

He turns around to look at the rest of the room. There is a playstation on a shelf, with games stacked up beside it. There is a laptop left haphazard on top of a bookshelf that’s filled to the brim, text books sat beside it with colored flags poking out from what seems to be almost every other page. 

And Steve is going to take this from him. He knows it already. He will never fit here, into this life. So he’s going to take Bucky away, and Bucky will lose it instead. 

It's only fair, he decides. They were his, first. He gave up the Avengers for Bucky, too. 

“Hey,” Bucky says sharply, grabbing his arm to tug him back around, before lifting his hands to cup his face. “None of this stuff matters,” he tells him, like he can read his mind, “cause none of it meant a damn thing without you.” 

Steve surges forward, placing his own hands against Bucky’s neck to tilt his head up and kiss him fiercely. Bucky is _his_ , and always has been. The others couldn’t have really known him, they could never really of had him. 

Bucky kisses him back, just as desperately, and all the years of not being brave enough to do this seem to just fall away until this is all that’s left. There’s always been an inevitability to him and Bucky: to the end of the line, every single time. 

And he's waited so long to finally have this. He deserves this reward. After everything, Bucky owes him this, he thinks, even as he’s horrified with himself. 

Because of course Bucky doesn't owe him anything.

But Bucky gives himself over anyway, and Steve takes and takes and _takes_ —just like he always has.

* * * * *

Once they start, it’s a little hard to stop. The serum has done wonders for their stamina, and it’s not until three in the morning that they finally make it to the bed. Steve thinks it's the first time in seventy years he actually sleeps.

He blames that for why it takes him so long to realize they’re not alone. 

He tugs his gun from the side of the bed, and sits up to aim it even as he uses his metal arm to push a waking Bucky back down. 

Tony is leaning against the doorjamb of the open bedroom door, with his legs causally crossed at the ankles, and his hands in his pockets. 

Steve doesn’t lower the gun, but it sparks in his hand and his grip loosens involuntarily, sending it bouncing off the bed to land on the floor. Tony pulls one hand out of his pocket and he’s holding a small black trigger, some kind of target EMP, most likely. Steve should have expected that Tony would have a trick up his sleeve—he usually does. What he lacks in his own brunt strength and skill at hand to hand, he more than makes up for with technological marvels and suits of reinforced titanium. 

It’s why it’s a little surprising that he came here in Armani, instead of that trademark red and gold. 

“Tony—“ Bucky says, sitting up worriedly, pulling unsuccessfully at where Steve’s metal fingers have gripped at his shirt. He swallows, and stops trying to get free. “How’d you get in?” 

“I had Pepper buy the building after you moved in,” Tony tells him calmly. “Wanted to upgrade the security. Not that it does much good when you invite the psychotic assassins to come in through the front door.” 

Bucky is slowly trying to edge out of Steve’s hold, so he just twists his fist, increasing the grip on his shirt. He can feel Bucky’s irritation, but Bucky obviously doesn’t want to split his attention between both Tony and Steve because he doesn’t keep fighting him. 

“Tony,” Bucky says, and his voice sounds almost terrified. “I told you what happened, what they did to him. He didn’t have a choice—“ he breaks off, briefly pressing his eyes shut. “I’m so sorry about your parents, what Hydra did to them was—“ 

“Yeah?” Tony breaks in sharply. “You know, you did tell me, and I’d just about come to terms with it. But it seems you forgot to mention the part where you’re shacking up with the killer.” 

Steve is surprised, but doesn’t let it show. He’d had no idea Bucky had told Tony, or that he’d even been in contact with him. He tries not to let it feel like a betrayal, just because Steve had vowed in that other lifetime that Tony was never going to know what Bucky had done. 

“I was going to ease into that part,” Bucky says weakly. 

"Oh, like maybe over lunch?" Tony asks, falsely conversational. "By the way—“

"It wasn't him, Tony," Bucky insists, quiet but certain. "I showed you the things they did to him. You know that, you saw—” 

"Yeah, and that's the only reason he's not dead right now," Tony snarls, losing his false casualness as he takes a step further into the room. "But you really think he just gets to live free now, after all that? That what, he destroys all those lives and now it's happily ever after? _With you_?”

Steve stiffens, narrowing his eyes as he tracks Tony’s movements. It hasn’t escaped his notice that he’s being sidelined from the conversation entirely, but he’s pretty sure anything he tries to say is only going to make things worse. 

“You read the files,” Bucky says, sounding almost desperate. “You know it wasn’t his choice. He was their prisoner!” 

“Oh, I read the files. Cover to cover. Was quite the thrilling tale,” Tony sneers. “Few points of confusion, I’m afraid.” Tony finally turns to look at him then, his cold eyes making him seem as without emotion as his mask. “Captain America.” 

Steve tries not to flinch at the undertones to that title. It always feels a little like someone’s walking over his grave, whenever he hears that name these days. 

“Can I call you Captain America?” Tony asks glibly. “Is that even who you really are? Cause see, things don’t quite add up. You told SHIELD that your memories always came back. Don’t give me that look, Bucky-Bear, you know I hack their files in my downtime.” He keeps his eyes on Steve the entire time, assessing him like he’s trying to figure out how the gears work in a machine. “You’d been out what, a couple days? A week, at most, at the time? In the files from Hydra, you had month long missions without check-ins. But you never fought them. Never. And you never failed your mission.” 

Steve tries not to let his expression give anything away. Tony’s always been too clever for his own good. It’s why when he first started his own search for Bucky after the fall of SHIELD, he’d never brought Tony in. He should have planned his backstory for this world better than he had, because he knows he’s left holes. Tony’s probably spotted every last one. 

“Tony, you have no idea what you’re talking about,” Bucky says tightly, finally pulling himself free of Steve’s grip in his frustration. Steve doesn’t reach out for him again, too worried Tony might take it for a hostile move. 

“You never fought them, not once,” Tony says, ignoring Bucky, his expression giving away his confusion. “Why didn’t you fight them? You were supposed to be—god, do you even know how much my dad loved you? He thought you were a hero.”

Steve says nothing in his own defense. He never wanted to hurt Howard, but it doesn’t mean that Tony isn’t still right. Steve never tried to fight them—for once, he hadn’t broken the rules just because it was the right thing to do. He’d followed them to the letter instead, because Bucky was too important to risk. 

Howard and Maria Stark had been a price he’d been willing to pay. 

“He was wrong about you,” Tony tells him coldly, clenching his fists. “The whole world was wrong about you.” 

“Tony, please,” Bucky starts, pushing himself forward to draw Tony’s eye to him instead. “We can work this out, okay? Nat can explain what they did to him. We can show you it wasn’t his fault. You just—“ 

“Really? You honestly think—“ Tony laughs. “Well, I’ve got a news flash for you, Buckaroo. It's either me or him, and we both already know you're not choosing me.” 

“Tony," Bucky pleads, and Steve tries not to bristle at the pain in his voice.

"Save it," Tony snaps. "I don't want to see either of you again. Him, I'd probably kill. And you—“ he breaks off, looking away, as he turns to head out the door. “Don’t come crawling back to me when your psycho boyfriend finally goes off the rails.” 

Bucky starts forward, and Steve reaches out to snag his wrist, pulling him back.

"Let him go," Steve says, and so Bucky does.

* * * * *

Bucky is laying with his head on his chest, and Steve can feel his tears as they seep through his shirt. Steve’s noticed that he never makes any sound when he cries. It makes him wonder how many times Bucky had cried and he had never known. 

He runs his hand through Bucky’s hair, and wonders why it had never upset him this much to lose his own friends. He wonders if maybe he’s just not the same person anymore, or he would miss them more. 

“Can I ask you something?” Steve asks, after Bucky’s breathing has evened out and the tear stains on his t-shirt have all dried out. Bucky half shrugs in his arms in response. “Were you sleeping with him?” 

Bucky jerks up, pulling free to look down at him incredulously. His eyes are wide and red, and he sucks in a startled breath. “Christ, Steve, what the hell?” 

"Were you?" Steve asks calmly. 

Bucky rolls his eyes, but lets himself fall back down to lay on his chest. "No, I wasn’t sleeping with him. Christ, Steve. Even when I thought you were dead...I knew there was nobody else for me. Nat kept trying to set me up with our co-workers. I hid from her once in a storage closet for like two hours, because she was convinced she’d found my future wife.” 

Steve huffs out a laugh, remembering Natasha’s determination to get him out and dating. He’s glad she’d been there for Bucky, too. 

“Tony’s just—he _was_ just a friend,” Bucky says softly. “He’s brilliant, you know, the sort of brilliant that’s so far ahead of everyone else that he’s on a completely different wavelength all the time. But he actually cared about my input. Can you believe that? Me? I mean, what do I know, right? But we were even working on something together.” He heaves out a low sigh. “Guess I’ll never see it finished now.” 

“What was it?” Steve asks, as he runs metal fingers gently through Bucky’s hair. 

“Doesn’t matter,” Bucky tells him listlessly. “You were right to say let him go. It’s for the best. I shouldn’t have expected—I mean, it’s not your fault, but that doesn’t change what happened. Of course he won’t want to be around us.” 

Steve feels guilty that he mostly feels relief. He’s never been all that great at dealing with Tony. He’d come to admire him after the invasion, even to respect him, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever truly liked him. 

Nat was the only other Avenger he'd been close to, but while he regrets the loss of their time together, he suspects that Natasha, of any them, would have understood his choice. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, and rests his chin atop Bucky’s head—because it’s possible not to regret something, and still be sorry for it. He’s learned all the subtitles of morality these last seven decades.

It’s hard to even remember a time when he thought things were just black and white.

* * * * *

It only takes two missions for him to catch on. Steve’s sure Bucky would have noticed sooner, if he wasn’t still so happy to just have him back. He comes storming into the SHIELD locker room, and stands above him with his arms crossed. Steve glances up from where he’s been untying his boots. 

“What the hell are you up to with Fury?” Bucky demands. 

“Hi, Bucky,” Steve says. “I’ve missed you, too.” 

“Yeah, have you?” Bucky asks, his voice falsely bright. “Cause I’ve just been here, waiting. For some reason no one wanted me to leave base. Protocol, apparently, some bullshit fine print about agents in a relationship and making sure the ‘significant other,’” Bucky sneers, complete with air quotes, “isn’t abducted or used in some way to compromise the mission. Funny thing is, it didn’t exist before they found out about us.” 

Steve sighs. He thought Fury had been particularily clever with that, actually, but Bucky had probably already gone through every piece of SHIELD’s protocol half a dozen times. For some reason everyone always used to think Steve was the bookworm, but he’d spent every moment of his spare time with a sketch book and his head up in the clouds. Bucky used to read Albert Einstein’s papers just for kicks. 

He’d been lucky that Buck had been so worried the first two missions that he’d been sleeping on base anyway, and hadn’t even noticed that he was lockdown. 

“I can’t talk about my missions,” Steve tells him. “You know that. They’re classified.” 

“I’ve been here almost three years. Since when is my security clearance lower than yours?” he demands. “I want to know what he has you doing.” 

“No, you don’t,” Steve answers calmly. “But I think we both know that you already do.” 

Bucky’s breath catches, and his eyes skitter away. “He’s sending you on assassinations?” he asks, pressing his eyes shut. “Steve—“ 

“I don’t think you’ve got the high moral ground here, Buck,” Steve says tiredly, as he gets to his feet. Bucky just tilts his gaze up, the defiance in his eyes not lessoning in the least. 

“That’s not what I meant,” he snaps. “If someone needs killing, I’ll kill ‘em. I ain’t got no problem with that. But you’re not—that’s just not you.”

“I’m not Captain America anymore,” Steve says softly. 

Bucky laughs, and there’s an edge of desperation to it. “I don’t give a fuck about Captain America,” he says. “I care about Steve Rogers, and this ain’t him.” 

“Yeah?” Steve snaps. “Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think.” 

“I know you’ve changed,” Bucky tells him. “So have I. It doesn’t mean we have to stay this way.” 

“I will do whatever I have to in order to keep you safe,” Steve says tightly. 

“No. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to look at me like I’m the one that died on you,” Bucky snarls, twisting his fist in Steve’s shirt and sending them both crashing into the wall. “You do know I’ve got a version of the serum now too, right? I’m almost as strong as you. You don’t have to protect me. I’m supposed to be the one protecting you!” 

Steve lets his head fall back against the wall, and closes his eyes. He knows that he’s the one the fell from that train. He remembers hitting the ground. He remembers the pain in his left arm, the terror of waking without it. It doesn’t really make the least bit of difference—when he closes his eyes, it’s still Bucky he sees falling every single time. 

“You had your turn,” Steve says quietly. “This one’s mine.” 

In one quick move, Steve spins them around so that it’s Bucky against the wall. He catches both of his wrists in his metal fist, and holds them pinned above his head. “You can be mad, if you want,” Steve tells him, as he leans down to press a kiss to his collarbone. “But I’m not letting you get hurt.” 

“And I’m not gonna let them use you," Bucky tells him fiercely, while Steve presses featherlight kisses up his neck. 

"Will you let me use them?" Steve whispers, when he reaches Bucky's ear. 

"Yes," Bucky answers helplessly, like it's the only answer he's able to give.

Amora had spoken of them as though they shared a soul. Fate's strings tied around them both so neatly that one way or another, they always found their way back to each other.

Steve wonders briefly if the world would be a better place if they'd never met, if they'd be better off.

In all of his two lifetimes, in all of his decades of experience, he has found nothing to be quite so destructive as love.

* * * * *

He doesn't tell Fury everything, but he tells him enough so that he knows there was another reality once: one where SHIELD burned all around them and Fury had run to Europe alone with all his covers blown.

At the threat that it may happen again, he'd given Steve everything he needed to go after her. 

The calendar shows the same date as the first time he met her, and he finds her in the very same place. He supposes even Amora is not immune to fate. 

“Have you come to ask me to change it back?” she asks. She is wearing the same red dress, but this time her shoes are blue instead of black. She turns and looks him in his eye, but her gaze does not catch him the way it did before. 

He stills, anyway, wary of what she might do next. “I’ve come to make sure that you don’t,” he says. 

“You don’t sound very grateful,” she tells him, her lips dipping into an exaggerated pout. “And after I protected you, so that you did not have to suffer as he suffered. You got to keep your free will, beginning to end.” 

He had wondered if that was due to Amora or the differences in the serum treatments used on him and Bucky. He should have known it was missed fine print in Amora’s deal. 

“Did you enjoy it?” he asks her. “Was that the point?” 

“The point?” she asks. “No, my Captain, it was the _price_.” She laughs, spinning away from him. “Did you think it would be easy? Changing fate? There is balance, to everything. Your friend, he has changed the world. We are not where we were before.” 

She looks back at him, stepping backwards as she watches him with a sly grin. “He got his mind back, he got back his _soul_ ,” she whispers, laughing lightly. “And so in return, the universe, it took yours. I’m afraid our business is quite at its end, you have nothing left to offer me.” 

She turns to go, and he steps forward to follow, clamping his metal hand around the back of her neck while using his other hand to slam an arrow into the center of her forehead. It doesn’t break the skin, instead it expands and suctions on, electricity flickering around the cross it makes until Amora’s entire nervous system goes into shock and she falls like a cut marionette. 

The arrows had been designed for Clint, with Loki in mind. They still don’t know much about magic, but they do know that the user needs their mind to use it. 

“Did you really think I would just let you leave?” Steve asks her, and then tsks, in the same tone she had used, in this same room, on this same exact day, an entire lifetime ago. “I’ve learned a few tricks, over the years. Really, you only have yourself to blame.” He kneels down beside her, drawing a long blade from the sheath on his hip. “You created this world, which means you have the power to undo it all again. Bucky’s safe here, he’s happy, and we're together. If anything, the world’s just a little bit of a better place. I can’t take the chance you might change it back.” 

She tries to speak, still convulsing from the shocks, but it doesn’t really matter what she might have said. No words could have gotten him to spare her, she is far too dangerous to leave alive. 

Asgardians aren’t easy to kill, in theory. In practice, he learns, not much survives a beheading.

* * * * *

The other Avengers don’t trust him.

Natasha seems to know instinctively that he was never brainwashed, and Clint follows her lead. She knows exactly the signs to look for and Steve doesn't know how to imitate them well enough. He could blankly kill people, that he had learned.

But he didn't know how to put on a show of unlearning it all again. 

She watches him with those knowing eyes any time they’re in the same room, and it’s weird, being on the other end of that assessing gaze. He can still recall the way her eyes would dance when she leaned forward in her car to pick him up, and the way she’d roll her eyes when he said something old fashioned, and the way—

He keeps trying to search for all those old connections, but they’re just not there. These are not exactly the same people he left. He is not the same man that left them. 

Thor’s still in England with Jane, and he’s only seen Bruce half a dozen times. He watches him warily and skirts around the other end of the room whenever they’re in the same place. He knows Bruce isn’t scared of him—because Bruce knows he doesn’t have to be scared of anything. 

Which means he makes the Hulk wary, and Bruce is afraid of _hurting him_.

But for all of their wariness with him, they all adore Bucky. 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, because everyone always had. Steve remembers growing up with Bucky, and the way people just sort of fell at his feet. All the girls were in love with him, and the guys that weren’t in love with him too all wanted to be him.

But Bucky actually makes Bruce laugh, and it does surprise him to see exactly how close all of them are. Bucky just throws himself down next to Bruce with a carelessness that he’d only ever seen Tony display around the man—making a show of not being scared, putting him at ease. 

Clint and Natasha, for their part, are obviously protective of Bucky. They all snipe at each other with a bit too much accuracy, cutting remarks that are meant to wound: but they care, which he supposes makes sense. In this version of the world, Bucky is practically an innocent. For all the people he’s killed in the war, he’s never done anything but what he thinks is right. Steve knows, now, how much of a difference that really makes. 

And he really doesn’t mean to eavesdrop on them, but he hears Natasha and Bucky when he’s passing by the training room, and some ingrained instinct from his own training has him freezing and pressing out of sight against the wall. 

“You’re not listening to me,” Natasha is insisting quietly. 

“I heard you,” Bucky says dismissively. “But you don’t know him.” 

“Neither do you,” she says. “Not anymore.” 

“So what, Nat, what should I do?” Bucky demands. “You want me to keep my distance? I just got him back!” 

“I want you to keep some god damned perspective, Barnes,” she says cooly. “I don’t think that’s much to ask.” She sighs, and he hears her pacing. “You know what he’s been up to, right? He’s taking out whatever Hydra leaders are left, one by one.” 

“Yeah, I figured,” Bucky says. “Good riddance. I’m not losing any sleep over it.” 

“Neither am I,” she says. “But that’s not the point.” 

“Well, do you think you could get to the point some time today?” he asks. “So we can actually finish sparring?” 

He hears a rush of movement and then a startled yelp from Bucky, but forces himself to stay where he is. He knows Natasha won’t hurt him, even if she does have him pinned. 

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky mutters in exasperation. “Was that whole conversation just a distraction so you could knock me on my ass?” 

“Yes,” she says simply. “Because you’re compromised, Barnes—when it comes to him, you don’t think. You need to know that, and you need to fix it. Next time you get distracted, it might not be in the training room.” 

“Not like Fury’s letting me go on any missions anyway,” Bucky says bitterly. 

“Just…don’t trust him, okay,” she says softly. “You can’t afford to trust him.” 

“You got it all backwards, Nat,” Bucky says, and he sounds sad. “I can’t afford not to.” 

"I really hope you know what you're doing," she tells him. 

But with the way her eyes are unsurprised as they meet his when she stomps out into the hall, Steve’s pretty sure that warning had really been meant for him.

* * * * *

He's done everything he can from within SHIELD. 

Amora is dead, and so are the last of the Hydra agents responsible for the Winter Soldier project. Killing them had been cathartic—but strange. They had never touched Bucky in this world, it had been his body, his mind, they had tried to strip apart. But Steve had killed them for Bucky, all the same. 

Now he wants out, but he knows Fury won’t just let him walk away—and none of them are going to be happy about him taking Bucky with him. They won’t let him go without a hell of a fight. 

So he doesn’t ask. 

He finishes his last mission and then he takes out the Strike team acting as backup with a tranquilizer gun, and stacks them all on the bed at the motel they’d been using as a base. 

Then he takes the Quinjet, and heads back for Bucky. 

He’d told Fury before he left for his last mission not to keep Bucky confined to base, under the guise that Bucky was getting angry and suspicious and it was better to just let him go home. Really, he just needed a more convenient extraction point. 

Bucky is sleeping when he gets to his apartment, and he snorts at the way he’s splayed across the bed. He pulls the go bags he’d prepared for each of them out from under the bed and then reaches up to shake Bucky’s ankle. 

“Steve?” Bucky asks, blinking up at him. “What’s going on?” 

“Get dressed,” Steve says. “We’ve gotta go.” 

He frowns down at the bags suspiciously, before narrowing his eyes at Steve. “What did you do?” he asks, with more fondness and exasperation than any actual heat. 

“Do you trust me?” Steve asks. 

“‘Course I trust you,” Bucky tells him. 

Part of him really wants to warn Bucky that he probably shouldn’t, but he just gets back to his feet with a nod. “Then get dressed.” 

Bucky heaves a put-upon sigh, but rolls off the bed and wanders over to grab some clothes from the closet. Steve waits anxiously while he dresses, casting worried glances out the window to try and check the roads below. 

He throws both bags over his shoulder before moving impatiently over where Bucky is pulling on a coat, and grabs his wrist to pull him towards the door. “Steve—“ Bucky curses, still pushing one of his feet into his shoe. “What’s the hurry? What’s going on?” 

“We’re not safe here,” Steve tells him, and continues pulling him towards the door. 

“Wait, wait,” Bucky says and digs in his heels, before pulling away to head towards his laptop. 

Steve follows him, taking the laptop from him and setting it back, looking over at Bucky apologetically. “I’m sorry, we can’t take that,” he says. “They could track us.” 

“So? We haven't done anything wrong. We can go wherever we—“ Bucky breaks off, narrowing his eyes. “Steve, seriously, what did you do?”

Steve lets out a breath. He doesn’t know how long they have before the Strike team wakes up and reports in, but it’ll be easier to get Bucky to come with him if he tells him the truth. “Fury was never going to just let me walk away, Bucky,” he says. “It was join up or get executed. I took out the Strike team that was with me on the last mission, and got out.” He brightens slightly. “I used a tranquilizer gun! Learned that from you.” 

“That son of a bitch,” Bucky snarls. “Why didn’t you tell me he threatened you?” 

“Because you would overreact,” Steve says dryly, “and I needed to stay on SHIELD’s good side. I needed them to get rid of the Hydra threat, but they’re all dead and gone, Buck.”

Bucky sighs, glancing towards the window. “And we’re not coming back, are we?” 

Steve wishes suddenly that he had warned him—because of course they couldn’t stay here. Tony may not have given up as easily as he seemed to, and he was clever enough without having the advantage of owning the place they lived. Fury would do whatever he could to continue using them both, and he already knew each of their weaknesses. 

Fury wasn’t above using Bucky against him, or him against Bucky. 

“No,” he agrees. “We can’t.” 

“Okay,” Bucky says, letting out a breath, and turning back to his bookshelf. “Right then.” 

He starts grabbing up his textbooks instead of the laptop, and Steve frowns at him. “You’re bringing your homework with you,” he deadpans. 

“Shut up, punk. It’s interesting,” he says good-naturedly. “And you won't be thinking it’s so funny when something happens to your arm and I'm the only one around to fix it.”

Steve perks up, because that’s an advantage he hadn’t thought of. “You could do that?” he asks. 

“I mean, I probably couldn’t build one without help,” Bucky admits, “but I’ve spent the last two years hanging out with Tony Stark. I think I can handle some basic maintenance and repairs.” 

After Bucky stuffs just about all the books he can into his duffle bag, he reaches up to start pulling pictures off the mantle. He doesn't take a single picture from after 1945, and for one brief, petty moment, Steve feels triumphant about that. Then he reaches past him, stacks up the rest of the picture frames and shoves them into Bucky’s bag along with the rest. 

Bucky watches him do it silently, then glances up at him in question. 

“I can ask you to leave, because I don’t actually know how to live without you,” Steve tells him quietly. “But I’d never ask you to forget them.” 

The both throw their go bags over their shoulders, and then Steve grabs Bucky’s arm and pulls him along into the hall a little more roughly than necessary. Bucky gives a couple protesting grumbles, but Steve doesn’t let up, because it’s a show for the cameras. If Bucky ever wants to come back, he wants it to look like he wasn't entirely willing to leave.

“You’re going the wrong way,” Bucky tells him, when he pulls him up the short flight of steps that lead to the roof.

“No, I’m not,” Steve says. “We can’t risk heading out the front door. You think Fury doesn’t have you watched? That Tony doesn’t?” 

“Even if they do, they’re not going to come after us, you know,” Bucky tells him. “Tony wants nothing to do with us, and it’s not Fury’s style. Fury doesn’t burn his bridges. He’ll want us happy in case he ever needs a favor.” 

“Yeah, well, I’m done handing out favors,” Steve tells him, tightening his grip on his hand as he pushes open the door to the roof. 

Bucky pulls to a stop, staring at the Quinjet parked on the roof in disbelief. “Are we seriously stealing a Quinjet?” he asks faintly, letting Steve tug him back along behind by the hand. “Why are we stealing a Quinjet?” 

“Because in stealth mode, even they won’t be able to track us,” Steve says simply. He turns around then, pulling Bucky up against him. “I think I'm finally ready for the war to be over.” He tips forward until his forehead is resting against Bucky’s, and then he closes his eyes. “So how about it? You ready to follow me into the jaws of domesticity?” 

“You know I’d follow you anywhere,” Bucky tells him, without missing a beat.

* * * * *

They don’t settle down anywhere right away, but they’re still young, even if they are impossibly old, and it’s time they finally got to act like it. 

They take the Quinjet on a world tour, with stops in France, Japan, Ireland and Australia just as a start, before landing on a small abandoned Fiji island after a close call with a pair of SHIELD agents. Sometimes they stay in five star hotels, but most of the time they sleep in the Quinjet. Bucky had plenty of money from royalties on Bucky Barnes merchandise, and Steve had managed to transfer most of it to an untraceable account. 

He also added no small amount of funds funneled from the Hydra heads he had taken out under Fury’s direction. He didn’t tell Bucky about that, and he doubted he would notice. For all that Bucky is better at almost everything in this future than him, he seems to have very little understanding of what things actually cost. He suspects that’s due to spending so much of the last couple years with someone like Tony Stark. 

This is their happily ever after, and it should be perfect. They’re smack dab in the middle of a paradise, laid out in a hammock. He’s got Bucky in his arms, healthy and whole, and it’s like something from a dream. 

But he just can’t shake the idea that neither of them ever really stood a chance. He doesn’t feel so much like he’s changed fate as bent it, and somehow he wonders if they’ve just ended up in different positions in the exact same place.

“Stop thinking,” Bucky tells him sleepily. “You’re making my head hurt.” 

“Sorry,” Steve says, grinning slightly. “I was just—do you have any regrets? You know, about how we’ve ended up?” 

Bucky pushes back to stare at him in disbelief. “We’re on an island that looks like it belongs on a postcard, Stevie,” he laughs, looking up at him through his too long bangs. “I don’t think it actually gets much better than this.”

Steve shakes his head, glancing out towards the water. “That’s not exactly what I meant,” he says. “But I think you know that.” 

“I put on a good show,” Bucky says, as he brushes back Steve’s hair, gently turning head back to face him again. “But I think I’m only ever half a person when you’re not here. So I don’t care where we end up. I don’t care where we go, cause all that stuff I left behind, that’s not what makes a home,” Bucky promises. “You’re my home, Steve. Always were.” 

“Yeah?” Steve says, grinning slightly. “Well, you know you’ve always been my everything.” 

“I still can’t believe we found each other again,” Bucky whispers, close enough that Steve imagines he can feel the words against his skin. "I don't know how you survived, how you came out the other side. If it had been me—I don't think I would have been strong enough."

"I know you would have," Steve tells him. "You would have been so much stronger than me. You would have fought them in ways I never did."

"You can’t know that," Bucky says.

Steve surges forward, kissing him desperately. He longs to correct him, to tell him how hard he fought, how much he survived—but he won’t. Because he doesn’t want Bucky to know what Steve has done for him, what he’s still willing to do. 

He doesn't ever want Bucky to know that he is all the soul that Steve has left.


End file.
